Out of this 'Verse
by Ephemeral-Nightboy
Summary: After the events of Miranda, River's mind is starting to clear. Serenity is back in the sky and interplanetary conflicts are put behind them, but then River meets a passenger calling herself Vanessa Cullen who really likes to complain about her parents.
1. Cold Open

(**Joss Whedon** and **Stephenie Meyer** object to being in the same sentence.)

(**A/N:** Post-BigDamnMovie and as canon-compliant in both universes as I can make it without re-reading the Twilight Saga. This is mostly just a River Episode with my take on Renesme's future thrown in for flavor.)

* * *

Cold Open

Clohie tried to be a simple girl. There was a safety in simplicity that she armored herself in. Out in the Kalidaya with such bad folk as those that had forcibly boarded the _Singing Sail_, being anything but what the men expected of her would've gotten her noticed and had them killing her or torturing her. Probably both, just for the hell of it.

As it was, they'd merely raped her, and more gently than she'd expected, then tossed her aside. She had more bruises than she cared to count and was sore in the nethers besides, with none but a few scraps of shirt left on her body, but none of her bones were broken and none of her flesh was torn bloody, so Clohie counted herself lucky and saved her anguish for the wreck of the _Felurian_.

Torn fragments of the shattered ship gleamed silver in Penglai's light. Clohie huddled by the small porthole, watching the silent dance of light and searching for the bodies of her sisters. It was to far away for her eyes to pick out faces, but looking for them was better than watching the brigands killing and looting the rest of her ship.

She was probably in shock, but couldn't think of how to tell for sure. The knowing that her sisters were dead seemed to have filled up her head, leaving no space left over for much feeling or any thoughts at all.

One of the burly men grabbed Clohie by the arm and dragged her up. With a few prods from his gun and some words Clohie didn't really hear, the man took her through the boarding tunnel and back into the small warship that a pirate crew really shouldn't have been able to get their hands on.

The man released her and Clohie stood numbly, watching the stars drift by as the brigand warship detached from the _Singing Sail_ and flipped around to face the wreckage of the _Felurian_. There was a lot of cruel laughter and loud boasting among the pirate crew. One of them said something to her, but Clohie didn't hear and so she didn't move.

The man backhanded her and the force of the blow sent her sprawling to the floor. There she would have stayed, but Clohie could still see a bit of the viewport, so she weakly began to pick herself up. Her eyes sought always to return to the approaching wreck and pick out the bodies of her sisters, however futile the effort was.

Rough arms circled her waist and dragged Clohie's rear up in the air. Trousers were unbuckled behind her. It may have been the same man who backhanded her, but Clohie didn't know, and didn't wonder. Rough hands clawed at her exposed breasts and Clohie whimpered as her sore womanhood was again made use of without a passing thought given to her discomfort.

Their rogue warship nosed ever so slowly into the wreckage of the Felurian. Pieces of metal and cold bodies bumped against the hull, thudding softly. A faint whirring came from below as the warships small cargodoors opened to space. Voices from the men in pressure suits reported in over a comlink, but the words slipped out of Clohie's mind before meaning could find them.

Muscular hips collided with her bottom a final time as the man finished. He shoved her away and did up his pants. Clohie fell on her side, eyes never leaving the viewport, staring numbly through a forest of legs.

At that moment, the body of a naked woman, pale as starlight and unreasonably beautiful, thumped against the viewport, another of many. Her body flopped limply as she rolled over the bow and began to slide off.

Then the naked dead woman floating in the black reached out a hand, fast as lightning, and latched onto the hull. A shocked silence spread through the crew of hardened criminals as the woman's unnatural gold eyes opened slowly and her lips parted in a snarling grin.

She raised her other hand, balling it into a fist as if she intended to smash through the viewport like common glass, but before the blow fell, her eyes locked onto Clohie's. The fist froze, and the the expression that stole over the unnatural woman's face could only be described as vengeful.

And just as quickly, she was gone. A pattering of impacts trailed down the hull of the ship, but were quickly drowned out by the sudden explosion of angry shouts, incredulous murmurings, and fearful denials. From the comlink came a scream that suddenly went silent with brutal abruptness. Then another, and another. The last voice whispered fevered prayers before it also screamed and was cut silent.

The decompression alarm went off for a short moment before a resounding boom echoed through the ship, the sound of airlock doors forced open and then released to slam shut. The several dozen men who'd taken Clohie were shouting and scrambling over one another for weapons. There was a polite knock on the door leading from the command deck.

Everyone froze, and Clohie surprised herself by feeling enough curiosity to turn her head. The knock came again, light, polite, and mocking.

"Well, I did knock first. No one can say I didn't." The voice was unspeakably beautiful and rich, but the tone was wrong. It was calm and musing, but it was impossible to sound like that and still be loud enough to be heard through and inch of neosteel.

With a crack like molten thunder, the metal of the door bloomed outward and the impression of a fist was clearly visible for an instant. It snapped back, leaving only a bent lump, but then the strike came again and this time the metal tore. A pale, slender fist burst through, and then ripped backwards. The torn edges of neosteel gouged her flesh, but she didn't bleed.

Gunfire rang, pocking the door, but the pale bloodless hand was already out. Clohie caught flashes of icy skin as the inhuman beauty tore more and more of the door away. Someone threw a grenade, but the hole was already big enough for a person.

In a flash she was through, and the grenade exploded impotently in the stairwell. Armor-piercing bullets struck her exposed skin, blasting chunks of white flesh from her nude body, but still she did not bleed.

With an unbelievable grace, she slipped among the men and ripped the gun from the hands of the closest and tore it in half. She threw the stock hard enough to cave in another man's skull and jammed the frayed barrel through the chest of a third.

Clohie felt something strike her hard in the gut and then again in the shoulder. Bullets, probably. They were flying everywhere. It didn't even hurt, which was interesting. That meant she _was_ in shock, didn't it?

In the time it took those thoughts to pass through Clohie's head, the fight ended. The last of the unconsious or dead men hit the deck with a clang and as fast as she could blink the nude woman was kneeling next to her.

"Hi there. I'm Bella. Sorry about that. Theatricality isn't usually my thing," the woman said as her hands moved lightly over Clohie's battered body. "Crap. I don't have the supplies to patch you up. I'm going to have to turn you. Crap again."

Clohie watched the inhuman beautry with mute awe. This woman who didn't bleed, who'd come out of the black and smited her captors like an avenging angel, her words Clohie heard. She might not be able to acknowledge them now but she would remember them later.

Clohie watched as the chunks of missing flesh from the gunfight grew back, leaving perfect unblemished skin. Bella's eyes darkened perceptibly, going from bright gold to more of a dim bronze as her body repaired itself.

Hands as cold as ice and hard as stone slid gently under Clohie's shoulders and lifted her from the floor. Bella leaned in close and pressed her lips to Clohie's neck, hard and cold like a statue, and her breath tickled Clohie's back.

"This is going to hurt, but its the only way," Bella whispered. "Just... give me a moment, so I can be sure I won't lose control."

An icy finger trailed down Clohie's belly, scooping up a bit of her blood. Slowly, Bella brought the finger to her mouth and touched it to her tongue. Bella went rigid, and for a moment could have truly passed for a marble statue. Careful and deliberate, she licked the blood from her finger and then nodded to herself.

Bell brought her mouth down to Clohie's neck again, and this time her stony lips parted against Clohie's skin. As gently as possible, Bella's teeth sank into her flesh and for the first time in hours, Clohie screamed.

The pain of it was incredible, burning right through her shock and eating into her body like acid in her veins. The burning pain was everything, crowding everything else out of Clohie's head. And it was _getting worse_. The fire in her blood was getting hotter and it was spreading.

Clohie screamed herself raw and then she screamed some more. The firey agony saturated her, becoming everything she was. Nothing she'd ever experienced came close. She wanted to die. She would rather have been beaten and raped a thousand times than endure another second. She would have murdered her sisters with her bare hands rather than endure another minute.

But the minutes stretched into hours stretched into days, and there was nothing but the pain.

When it ended, and the crystal clarity of immortal life consumed the scattered remnants of Clohie's human mind, she opened her eyes on her new existance and wondered what she was. It was like the pain had never happened, at least not to her. It was like her human mind had died and whatever she was now was so much more that a mere second of idle thought washed away nearly two decades of human life. Those memories were like watching a blurry broadwave on mute. Human pain and human horror. It wasn't worth keeping and because Clohie didn't cling to it, it slipped out of her mind, leaving only vague knowledge of her human past.

"Are you okay?" a voice asked. Bella. She was still there and had found pants and a shirt at some point.

Clohie wanted to stand up and in an instant she was on her feet. She marveled the way her body moved, effortless and perfect. She stared at her pale hands, marveling at the tiny facets of her skin that had been barely perceptable to human eyes. Looking around, her eyes stopped at the viewport and Clohie gasped.

Space. The Black. With her new eyes she could see deep among the stars and look upon a million wonders. Swaths of stars and swirls of galaxies, tiny but visible and beautiful.

"Ah," Bella said, looking out beside her. "Yes, it's quite incredible the first time you truly see it. The first time I ever went off world it caught me completely off guard. My husband and I stared for hours. Are you okay?"

"I am," Clohie finally said. "I shouldn't be, but I am. How can I be okay?"

"What do you mean?"

"I should be insane," Clohie murmured. "I was insane. There was nothing left. So how can I be awake and talking and thinking now? Who am I?"

"You're still you. Just a better you," Bella said, then she chuckled. "I was expecting you to ask what you are, not who. That's what newborns usually ask."

Clohie hadn't actually thought about that, but she was more than a little curious. "What am I? What did you do to me?"

"I made you like me," Bella said. "Immortal. Back on Earth-That-Was we were called vampires."

"Oh, so that's why I'm so thirsty."

Bella nodded. "Yup. That's the one bad part. Listen, I don't usually give the speech, but you have a choice now. Two paths you may walk, each with different hardships and different rewards. If you smell human blood, the desire will overwhelm you, and you'll kill and drink before you have a chance to think about it. Control can be learned but it is not easy."

Bella went on to describe the choice between human blood and animal blood, and Clohie listened and soaked up Bella's words. The term "newborn" was remarkably apt, Clohie thought. She felt new to the world, with a brain open and waiting to be filled.

"Lastly," Bella finished. "If you want to, we have the men who hurt you, still alive. They're tied up on the cargo deck. We can - "

"I want to see them," Clohie said.

"You don't sound very angry," Bella noted.

"I'm not," Clohie said. "But I want to look at their faces and see if that changes."

"Alright. Brace yourself against the scent. You're going to want to eat them."

Clohie followed Bella down the stairwell and emerged on the cargo deck. The inner airlock door had handprints in it and it was bent, not forming a full seal. Another vampire, a young man with bronze hair and black eyes, was guarding the survivors. He nodded to her.

Clohie looked upon the faces of the men turned up towards her, stark with terror, and she smiled. "My body had something you wanted, and you used it without the slightest care. Now it's your bodies that have something I want, and guess what? I feel like returning the favor."

Clohie inhaled deeply, breathing in the scent of them, and then she simply let go of herself. She fell upon the men like a demon, and their screams were sweet in her ears.


	2. Lifefulness

Lifefulness

"I mean it, moonbrain! Gimme back my dinner!" Jayne shouted.

"Nuh uh," River giggled, dancing out of reach as he swiped at her.

"Gimme!"

"Nope!"

"I aint playin', girl."

River stopped in mid-prance, balanced up on the back of her chair. She held her hands behind her back and leaned down, peering intently at the big lummox of a man. "You are."

Giggling madly, River twirled around, dropping Jayne's dinner pack, and doing a handstand on the man's shoulders. Before Jayne knew what had happened, she'd slung herself onto his back and rested her chin on his head.

"Ruttin' hell?"

"Boy plays in the schoolyard. Left behind by his mind. Gum in the hair. Nasty words. Can't catch up," River said, leaping free as Jeyne twisted around and running off with a pealing laugh.

"Is it just me or is her new cheerfulness fuelin' her crazy?" Jayne asked.

"It's just you," Mal and Zoe said at the same time.

Jayne grumbled under his breath and picked up his dinner.

* * *

Serenity.

The gentle warmth of its lifefulness touched River like waves upon the shore. It washed over her and caressed her like a thousand gentle hands brushing her skin - no, wait, those were Kaylee's hands, and that was Simon's skin.

It was happening more and more since Miranda. Not Simon and Kaylee. Their rate of fornication had held steady since the time when things were broken and River was awakened. The accelerating phenominon was the ordering of her senses. The things she felt, they were becoming identifiable. Not reliably so, not yet, but more than before.

It would get clearer. The sensations hadn't changed. It was her ability to think around them that was improving. Zoe's room swirled with bittersweet dreams and River could look at the play of broken passion without forgetting that she was looking at a dream or forgetting who she was looking at. River stayed connected to her hands, her hands remained on Serenity, guiding her through the Black.

Remaining aware of herself while the lives of Serenity's crew caressed her senses had an interesting side-effect. River's body tended to manifest the appropriate primordial responses to the stimuli. Sometimes, this was unpleasant, but useful, such as when one of the crew was injured. In the time when things were broken, River was unable hang onto herself when such an event occured and could not relay any useful information without that reference frame.

In other cases, the side-effect was pleasureable, but off-putting or frustrating by turns. The unfulfilled ache River felt whenever Mal and Inara got too close to each other almost hurt with its intensity. More than once, River had decided it was prudent to drop whatever she was doing and slip away to find a hidden nook where she could wrap her arms around herself and let a tear of frustration or two fall from her eyes before pulling her dress up and plunging her fingers into her soaked sex, pleasuring herself to the point of soreness.

It was more enjoyable when it happened with Simon and Kaylee, but no matter how caught up in the lovely sensations River became, it was now impossible to completely forget that two-fourths of what she was feeling was being generated by her _brother_. This resulted in somewhat less enthusiasm on River's part once she was in the midst of stimulating herself. It was much more difficult to resist getting to that point in the first place, though.

River was already flushed when she reached for the console and set Serenity to auto-pilot, squirming in her chair and squeezing her legs together. Her hands were steady and quick anyway. She estimated seventy-nine seconds before her lubricious secretions soaked through her dress and left a wet-spot on the pilot's chair.

Leaving Serenity to itself, River departed the bridge on quick and silent feet. She passed Kaylee's room and came unusually close to missing a step as the sensations swelled through her body. River hurried passed and was about to duck into the stairwell when she stopped abrubtly and turned to face the hatch of Jayne's room.

Jayne was dreaming.

The dream wasn't very vivid or defined, but it was about River. She took a single step towards the hatch, focusing on Jayne through the metal deck. There really wasn't much in the way of detail, but Jayne was very much having an erotic dream about River at that moment.

It was an opportunity, and one River wasn't sure she could ignore. She needed to satiate the storm of hormones that raged through her body. She needed to feel the culmination and climax of all the preceeding sensations she had been immersed in for weeks, but that her extended senses could never directly detect and she could never achieve by herself in sufficient quality. And above all she needed something to drown out her brother and Kaylee.

And, she reflected, she very much wanted to put her perfected body to use doing something enjoyable and creative, rather than destructive, even though the traumas of her past had rendered her sterile and thus incapable of actually creating anything and she wasn't very shiny on the idea of mixing her genes with Jeyne and that train of thought went to an unsettling place full of miniature Jaynes and that was nearly as off-putting as knowing exactly who's hands she could feel groping her - Kaylee's breasts right at that moment.

River gave herself a little shake. Ruminating on the various concepts connected to the word "creative" would probably not prove sufficient distraction from the sweltering needs of her flesh, and that train wreck of thought had started in first place with the realization that River didn't want a better distraction, she wanted someone to just fuck her already.

Jayne was capable of giving her what she needed. Jayne was the most likely to believe he was still dreaming. Jayne was the least likely to resent her wanton use of his body. Jayne was also the most fun to mess with. River stood motionless in the corridor for a full twenty seconds, thinking it over.

A mischevious smirk appeared on River's face.

* * *

Nude as the day she first met Serenity, River dropped silently onto the foot of Jayne's bunk. The man himself was sprawled on his back with one leg hanging off the edge, bare-chested but still wearing sand-colored cargo pants and boots. Tiny droplets of moisture fell onto the robust cloth as River moved spider-like up Jayne's body, smoothly shifting her weight without jostling the faded bedding.

She paused briefly to undo Jayne's belt and zipper, before crawling the rest of the way to his sleeping face. River inhaled softly, inches from his slack lips as her body throbbed with lustful anticipation. Jayne's dream still wasn't very detailed, so it was easy to match herself to what he was dreaming. Fingertips trailed over ribs. Soft lips nuzzled collarbone. Firm breasts brushed stubbly cheeks. Droplets of clear bodily fluid decorated Jayne's abs. The last wasn't part of Jayne's dream, but it was an inevitable consequence of River's physical state.

He started coming out of the dream. His lips moved sleepily against her skin, instinctivly seeking a nipple. With a half-controlled motion, Jayne reached up and pulled River down onto him, groaning something unintelligible into her chest. River moaned softly as skin hit skin and took the opportunity to hook her toes into the edges of Jayne's waistband and push his pants down.

"Huh, whuh?" Jayne grunted, coming awake as River slid down, draging her breasts over his hairy chest and shoving his pants down to his ankles with her feet.

"You're dreaming," River lied, reaching behind her for his manliness. "Dreams of the girl. Best to enjoy it. Never know when you'll wake up."

His shaft was warm and firm in her hand, and River's patience had long since fled. She shoved the head between her soaked folds and impaled herself with one sharp motion. River's voice rose in an uninhibited scream of pleasure as her outer loins mashed down on Jayne's hairy skin. She dropped forward, rolling her hips to grind against him.

"Let's enjoy a shiny dream," River panted.

River let his impulses take the lead, feeling everything she was feeling and everything he was feeling. She conformed to his expectations and desires as they formed, before they even had time to become actual thoughts. Her mind melted into Jayne's senses, creating a feedback loop of pleasure as she drew on more and more of the preternatural grace and stamina that was originally ment to _end_ life and cause _pain_.

It was probably a good thing sound didn't carry very well through Serenity's bulkheads. River wasn't sure she'd be able to stop herself even if they were interupted, but such an interuption would make it a lot harder to maintain the fiction that Jayne was dreaming.

River screamed again as she went tumbling over her orgasmic threashold. Her vision nearly blacked out as the pleasure hit her harder than anything she'd ever been able to do to herself. It snapped her back to herself, ripping away control of her limbs in an explosion of ecstasy and putting a hitch in the perfect harmony of the dance that was her and Jayne's wild fucking.

It wasn't enough of a hitch for Jayne to have more than half a thought. He was far too caught up in the sex to bother thinking about whether or not he was dreaming, and as soon as River regained control of her limbs she was back to moving in perfect harmony with Jayne's mind.

River felt him building to a climax of his own. He groaned and bucked into her haphazardly as his fingers dug into her butt, his presence flickering in and out of existence to her extended senses. It was the only thing River had never been able to experience through other people. Even with his pulsing organ inside her, her extended senses couldn't feel his orgasm. There was a neurological explanation for the exception that River didn't bother remembering in too much detail just then, instead focusing on what _her_ body could feel of the event.

She wasn't at all ready to be done yet. River clamped down with her legs and loins, not letting Jayne's flagging manhood escape her body as she leanded down and suckled his sweaty, muscular neck. He still didn't doubt he was dreaming, and before long River had him hard again. The dance of lust continued.

* * *

Moving on steps that were considerably less steady than usual, though still fairly silent and sure, River flowed back to the pilot's chair. There was a dreamy, satisfied smile that wouldn't leave her face, with occasional twitches of amusement whenever River thought about how Jayne might try to explain to himself why he was so sore and aromatic the next morning. Or how she'd actually managed to exhaust Jayne to the point of him _passing out_.

River's fingers glided onto Serenity's controls as she shivered and let out a content sigh. While she made sure Serenity was still on course, River mused idly about the possibility of future nocturnal visits to Jayne's bunk.

* * *

Over the next few days, River had to exert an extraordinary level of self-control to avoid collapsing in a fit of giggles every time she and Jayne were in the same room. The big man got comically awkward and his thoughts would frequently get stuck in a loop of thinking that their night was way to intense to have been a dream, but way to unfathomable and unlikely to have been real.

In a fit of mischief, River dropped hints to remind Jayne that she was privy to his internal debate, and actually did collapse in a fit of giggles when Jayne clued in and left the room in a mild panic, wondering if River could control his dreams.

River somewhat regretted giving in to the temptation to tease him. Even without saying something to him along the lines of, "I can make you cum with my brain," it would likely still be much harder to convince him he was dreaming a second time if she snuck into his bunk again.

* * *

A week later, when Serenity was a day out from Greenleaf, River did it anyway.

She decided the risk of everyone finding out about what she was doing was worth it. She wanted to feel it again, that explosion of pleasure and that glow of satiation that lasted all through the next day, which River simply couldn't get from her fingers. Or from Kaylee's vibrator, which River had borrowed once but never used because Kaylee had been using it while fantasizing about Simon for over a year and that left enough of a psychic trace that River couldn't ignore the Simon-ness of the thing, so River had put it back. Also because taking it had been a flagrant violation of Kaylee's personal space, but River hadn't thought of that until later.

River stripped down to her skin and reached out with her senses. Keeping careful track of the positions and movement intentions of her shipmates, River slipped out of her room and made her way to Jayne's room, letting no one see her. Especially not Captain Mal who was sitting in the cockpit and could have seen her in all her nudity if he'd looked behind him at the wrong moment.

He wasn't going to turn around, though, so River was able to slip smoothly into Jayne's room, unseen. Jayne was wearing only his undershorts this time, and the blanket that normally concealed his personal armory was draped over him. He wasn't dreaming this time either, but River wasn't going to let that stop her.

Breath shortening with anticipation, River lifted the blanket off his feet and crawled under it. She tugged his undershorts down without pausing as she slithered up his body. Her head emerged from the other end of the blanket over Jayne's chest, as he grunted something in his sleep, shifting beneath her. His semi-limp man-part flopped against River's inner thigh with an enticing warmth.

She grabbed it and pushed it at her entrance, not caring that Jayne was still asleep. River rolled her hips to work the rest of the semi-soft length into her, moaning as it finished hardening up within her. She rocked her hips against his, raking her hands through his chest hair. He woke up quickly from there.

"You're dreaming again," River singsonged.

"Bwuh? Ngh," Jayne grunted as River once more sank herself into taking ques from his mind.

An hour later, Jayne was once again passed out from exhaustion, and River shivered pleasantly with that dreamy smile of satisfaction on her face.

* * *

The next day, Jayne didn't know what to think, but despite his confusion his eyes did follow River around in a way that some might have called lecherous. Inara noticed first. Kaylee noticed second, and even though she and River separately sought to destract him, Simon noticed third, while most of the crew was hanging around the cargo bay. Zoe was in the cockpit and Inara was in her shuttle, but everyone else was there.

Simon stepped up beside Jayne as he watched River walk away. "Don't even think about it."

"Think about what?" Jayne growled.

"I don't like the way you're looking at River," Simon said. "Just because she's of age now, does not-"

"Oh ruttin' hell, Doc, I ain't after your sister," Jayne grumbled. "I'd have to be crazy as her, even if she does have an ass on her..."

"I _told_ you to cut that out!" Simon said, raising his voice.

"Or what?" Jayne challenged.

River took a moment to marvel that she was lucid and not a huddled wreck in the face of all that righteous anger pouring off Simon and all the grumpy exasperation wafting from Jayne. Still, the confrontation was going nowhere productive, fast. Captain Mal heaved a weary sigh from the catwalk.

Simon began to shout, "If you _touch_ her I'll-"

"SIMON!" River's voice cut through the argument like a sword as she padded up to them. "Quit being a boob."

And to the utter shock of all present, River leaped up, wrapped her legs around Jayne's hips, and kissed him so ferociously that he stumbled backwards and fell flat on his back. She broke away and looked over her shoulder.

"Has a weak spot," River said with smirk at a speechless Simon. "Doesn't kiss 'em on the mouth."

With that, River bounced up and wandered off, as though she did that every day. The shocked looks followed her all the way out of the cargo bay and into the commons. Jayne looked completely stunned and Simon's jaw had litereally dropped.

"Well, that was unexpected," Mal commented.

It was a whole five minutes before Simon followed her. He found her upside-down in the armchair, head hanging towards the floor. Her hands drifted in front of her, making shaddow puppets on the side of her face with the light from the infirmary. He sat down next to her.

"Is there something going on between you and Jayne?" Simon asked gently, but his insides were twisted with mild revulsion.

River smiled at her brother. "Nothing of importance. He's merely... handy."

Simon grimaced, closing his eyes for a moment as he worked up the nerve to ask, "Handy?"

"For sating hormonal needs," River said. "Also for blocking out errant sensory information when my brother and his girlfriend engage in similarly coital acts."

"WHAT?" Jayne cried from the doorway before Simon could reply, slowly going pale. "You told me I was dreaming!"

Simon looked back and forth, jaw working but no sound coming out.

"I lied," River said simply.

She giggled, and licked her lips while staring pointedly at Jayne's crotch. Jayne paled further and bolted with vague thoughts of hiding before Zoe found out about this and died laughing. Kaylee came in as Jayne left. She didn't say anything, but she came over and gave Simon a few comforting pats, looking amused.

"Okay," Simon finally said, "Okay, River, I understand that your sexuality is starting to manifest. I would have worried if you'd gotten any older and it hadn't. But _why_, why _Jayne_ of all people?"

"The water lacks a complete set of functions. Doesn't mix right. Not safe," River said. "Oil and water can touch with great frequency and vigor, but never mix. Always safe."

Simon blinked and looked to Kaylee in confusion. River went back to making shadow puppets, legs swaying idly in the air. Kaylee shrugged. River was vaguely aware that Simon didn't understand, but a more compatable format for her explanation eluded her at the moment.

A different revelation suddenly registered with Simon, then. "Wait, you can _feel it_ when me and Kaylee - "

"Oh boy," Kaylee sighed, hauling her boyfriend up, narrowly averting a minor crisis. "Come on Simon, let's... go start diner! Yeah, it's totally our turn to cook! You know our first time, River was actually _watching_ us from the celling and I didn't say anything because you probably would have stopped and I didn't want you to stop and River obviously wasn't bothered and we've been sleeping together for months so there's really nothing to panic about! Now come on and help me with this. You get that..."

River watched with a smile as Kaylee dragged Simon up the stairs and did a wonderful job heading off the fit he'd been about to throw. It was occasionally inconvienient, yes, but Simon and Kaylee were so _warm_ together and it would be tragic if that was disrupted. If not for one of the people involved being her brother, River likely would have basked shamelessly in their lovemaking, as she had in the before time with Zoe and Wash on those rare ocassions that she remained lucid enough through the experience to appriciate it.

* * *

A faint shudder ran through Serenity as River set her down at the Greenleaf spaceport. With a familiar whirring, the engines wound down and the cargo ramp unsealed and lowered. River left the cockpit and descended to the catwalks as Mal and Zoe stepped out into the sunlight with Jayne. Jayne had a bit of a grumpy look to him and Zoe was still occasionally shooting him looks and snickering under her breath.

Mal was pretending really hard that he was oblivious to this.

Kaylee set up her lawn-chair and parasol, fishing for passengers. River perched on a crate behind her and watched the streams of people move passed.

Some time later, a petite, pale young woman with a ridiculous quantity of long bronze hair broke from the crowd and paused in front of Serenity. River looked at her and was almost swept away like a rowboat struggling against a waterfall. She was so _bright,_ shining with more life than River had ever seen concentrated in one person before. River sucked in a quiet gasp.

"Hiya," Kaylee greeted the strange girl, twirling her parasol. "Like the look of her, don't ya?"

"I suppose," the strange girl said in a beautifully smooth voice. "Where's she headed next?"

Kaylee stood up with a smile. "St. Alban's the current plan. Interested in a ride? Serenity here's the smoothest you'll find. Just three plat for fair."

The strange girl tilted her head for a moment of silent consideration, before pulling a pouch from her pocket and handing over the coins. Kaylee beamed and introduced herself, shaking the girl's hand. River felt through Kaylee that the girl's hand was surprisingly warm and shocklying sturdy, but there was too _much_ for River to make sense of anything from the strange girl herself. It was so... _much_. River was mezmorized.

"Nice to meet you, Kaylee," the girl said. "Vanessa Cullen. I go by Nessie for short."


End file.
